Eclipse
by justira
Summary: Kain wants too many things.


This is a series of 15 drabbles, each exactly 100 words. Originally written for fuckyeahfinalfantasy on Dreamwidth.

* * *

 **Eclipse**

* * *

In the old forgotten passageways beneath Baron Castle the walls exhale ghosts like vaporous winter breath: a fine spice on a hunt for treasure, harmless old haunts that feather around them as they creep down the halls with their stolen torch, their voices a nervous-laughing titter of echoes.

When the revenant comes Kain's blood freezes and he sees the panicked bloom of Rosa's untutored magic, shielding them; Kain's lips parting in awe and breathlessness as they flee.

But as they tumble back down the halls, to light and safety and a likely spanking, it is Cecil who clutches his hand.

* * *

The pondwater turns all their hair an indeterminate grey, leeching out Rosa's bronze and darkening Cecil's until they might all three be ashen-mopped siblings. But the soft brushes of skin as they play raises the hairs on Kain's nape in a way the chill water doesn't, and he watches them, trying to understand: Rosa's bright eyes, Cecil's quiet face.

The water feels like flying; he stays in the pond after they leave, settle close together on the grass. The sunshine falls on their drying hair, washing them a clean pale gold, and though he's not underwater anymore he can't breathe.

* * *

When the air starts to feel electric-thin between them he thinks it's Rosa's magic — and it is but it isn't: small sharp-gold glints when they touch that have nothing white or holy about them. He wonders desperately if she can feel it, if she tastes metal on her breath like rain and lightning churned inside — if she senses his presence on her skin, feels his absence when they're apart.

Kain stares at the ceiling, sleepless; listens to Cecil's breath in their room and covets the aware prickle of his skin that never fades, because Cecil never leaves him.

* * *

He knows when they discover each other: words turn thick and clumsy, falling into the sudden silences in awkward bursts; limbs gone abruptly long and disobedient brushing accidentally, seeming to scald them. Kain would laugh if not for the confused tightness of his heart, watching them: a happy-hollow emptiness, and he tries to distract himself, distract them all with talk of their futures, mage and soldiers, the sharp nervousness of impending training so unlike the soft buzz of being with them.

It eases them a little and he breathes freer and loves them and thinks: _I_ discovered you first.

* * *

Cecil is not the kind to speak of it but Kain knows when it has happened, and he finds himself alone on the practice fields, angry desperate jabs of his spear slicing the air as he remembers the soft flush of Cecil's face, red blooming across pale skin and the fine lines of his nose, the way Kain's fingers had itched and wanted to touch, wanted to take, _wanted_.

He wants to taste her on Cecil's lips.

He wants Rosa to taste Kain the next time they kiss.

He wants to take Cecil's face in his hands and share nothing.

* * *

Rosa pulls him into their small circle endlessly, her invitation sunshine on his skin, gentle in intent and scalding in effect; he burns cold. She doesn't know how it sears him — nor will she, ever; she and Cecil share their hours with him and he's grateful-jealous-silent when their time alone without him is scarce: he can taste those hours as they tick by, burned into his palms, stamped by his hands onto his own fevered body.

They share themselves with him: Rosa's sun-kissed purity and Cecil's moonlit regard in her reflected light, and he feels like twilight between them.

* * *

The irony of it is that Kain had already chosen a path alone before it happened: he will be a dragoon, as he knows Cecil will not. Cecil and Rosa for each other, and the skies for him, where moon and sun dwell, where their light will always touch him.

But when the parting comes it cleaves them not in two, but in three: Cecil consents to the dark knight's path.

The last night before training begins, the three spend talking on the hill by the pool. Kain chokes on it: the first time they have felt all-three-together in months.

* * *

The sky sweeps across the darkness inside him, chasing the thick roils of himself until he feels nearly scoured. He touches down to find Cecil watching him, helmless, his hair a white spill against the dark armour. Kain regards him across the steps between them: the clean line of jaw, the tired flatness of his mouth.

"Her touch sears me," Cecil says, quiet on the wind.

 _And yours me. These words burn._ Kain doesn't know what his silence says, but Cecil takes a long breath. "Help me with the armour, please."

Kain nods, and keeps his touch distant and cool.

* * *

Kain watches the armour eclipse Cecil, swallow him, as close to his skin as touch; Kain tries not to stare. Cecil tells him of the darkness it seems to seed inside him and Kain wants to laugh, cruelly, because Cecil does not seem to see the shadows that dog Kain: jealousy, pride, selfish want, hovering over him like Baron's ghosts, clinging to his skin where only high-borne winds can tear them free. Cecil begins to find himself unholy, and Kain wonders if that's so wrong: _let us be unholy together, then._

He wonders if Rosa's touch would burn him, too.

* * *

He finds Cecil exhausted in Kain's room, waiting. The blue shadows under his eyes match his complexion too well and Kain simply looks, for a moment.

"I can't take it off," Cecil whispers. "I want to. I can't."

Kain kneels before him. He takes his gauntlets off, this time: the armour feels less like metal and more like sharkskin, organic and rough under his fingertips. Cecil's breath quickens as it comes off, piece by piece under Kain's hands, and Kain watches his face, steadily, to remind himself every moment that what those shaky exhalations hold is the edge of tears.

* * *

Rosa seeks him out, and he keeps the bitter twist off his lips: he knows it's Cecil. She tells him he's her closest friend, _their_ closest friend, as he silently drinks in her face; she tells him she needs him and takes his hand. Her touch is a sudden frost, spreading crystalline across him like all his dark silent thoughts leaping from his blood up to his skin, to be near her, to confess, to freeze forever visible, tattoos on his fingertips that will ever speak for him: _I want too many things._

"Help him," she says. "Please help him."

* * *

The armour is learning Cecil's skin: it deepens into the grooves between muscles, learns the lines of bones; Kain watches as it hollows itself into place, casts shadows upwards onto Cecil's face. Kain wonders what magics Rosa's fingers would feel seeping from it, hungry and dark. He helps Cecil with the pauldron, rubs his fingers together and looks at them, curious at their lack of this perception.

And he puts his hand on Cecil's bare shoulder over hunger-etched red lines, and neither of them flinches and Cecil's eyes are endless: Kain had thought no vaster need existed than his own.

* * *

He can touch where Rosa can't, and the knowledge burns in his fingertips, settles on his tongue; he looks Cecil in the eye as he aids him and he knows his hands are hungry, wanting the armour's knowledge, the secrets of Cecil's skin: wanting to know what blackness it feeds on in Cecil's heart because he remembers Cecil's face after Cecil and Rosa had first kissed and thinks: _if we are both now too unholy for her, can we find each other in darkness?_

And they are all three of them empty with hunger: the armour, and Cecil, and Kain.

* * *

Cecil grows less bowed under its weight, his eyes less hollow; he leans into Kain's hands, lids closed, breath deep like he inhales the moment, as if Kain's touch is an assurance of his own humanity underneath that dark and hungry second skin, and Kain does not laugh; does not ask Cecil if it is humanity they share or something else.

Kain places his palms on Cecil's back, leans his forehead against it, exhale long down his spine, and listens to Cecil's breath catch.

Rosa thanks him for Cecil's ease; he does not tell her how he came by it.

* * *

When Cecil stumbles into Kain's room and tears the armour off, piece by piece with his own hands, Kain understands: a full dark knight at last, and Cecil weeps; Kain wonders if it is for himself or Rosa and—

"Kain," Cecil breathes, "Kain," wet with tears, desperate, unarmoured in the moonlight and when Kain touches him he takes Kain's face in his hands, kisses him in the dark, Kain's hands in his hair.

The moment slides bitter-coveted down Kain's throat: Cecil could not go to Rosa for this, and Kain knows he will never be this weak again.

Kain breathes.

 _End._

* * *

 **Notes:** Writing kid-to-teen Kain was... interesting, especially as I believe this is the first Kain I've published — unbeta'd, no less. Haha. Death.

In addition, this is my first extended try at this drabble-story thing. It was interesting trying to pick moments and encapsulate them like this, especially for someone as tl;dr as I am. I feel like choice of moment and general tl;dr-ness are two of my bigger weaknesses, so definitely an interesting exercise.


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